1,000 bloom chrysanthemum: The largest in the western world

This 2011 video from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania‘s Longwood Gardens goes behind-the-scenes to show how one fosters the growth of a Chrysanthemum plant with over 1,000 blooms. Senior gardener and chrysanthemum specialist Yoko Arakawa helped create the living display using cultivation techniques that she learned in Japan. Its dome-shaped metal frame was specially built.

The “Thousand Bloom Mum” yielded 1,167 flowers in 2011, 1,416 in 2013, as seen in the video below, and now enjoys over 1,500 perfectly arranged yellow blooms. As noted in the video caption: “This difficult art is hardly practiced anymore, making this plant the largest of its kind in North America.”

via Digg.